Shén Yù
Shén Yù (神谕, meaning oracle) is the strategist of the Yangban. Appearance: Shén Yù is a tall thin man who wears black Yàngbǎn robes that accent his rigid formal appearance. Abilities and Powers: Shén Yù is Thinker who is able to see incoming attacks through a form of pseudo-clairvoyance in theaters of conflict.Shen yu Thinker, maintained expert tactical abilities and understanding of movements and maneuvers, giving a pseudo-clairvoyance regarding battlefields Yangban - Parahuman List, bolded edit by Wildbow. In fact he was capable of managing a nigh-instantaneous counterattack when Khepri opened portals into the Yàngbǎn's world.Fuck it all. There was a time for strategy, and there was a time for the brute force approach. Hell, the brute force approach could be called a strategy unto itself. I’d find out about Shén Yù’s power the hard way. He could see attacks coming. Did it work when the attack came from every direction? I divided the bugs into tenths. Then I opened nine portals into the Yàngbǎn’s world. The tenth I opened into Earth Bet, above the portal I’d reopened. They did react. Shén Yù did manage a nigh-instantaneous counterattack. A hundred capes deployed to my general area, teleporting in, and then flying around with speeds that would have put them on par with cars on a highway. - Excerpt from Speck 30.3 This may well have been from in built fall backs he trained into his subordinates. Another benefit to his abilities is having beyond expert level tactical sensibilities with talent in regards to the actions of large groups of combattents. Making him a immanent part of the Yàngbǎn successes. Conversant in English and Mandarin Chinese,Shén Yù spoke. It didn’t sound Chinese, with the wrong cadence. It was a question, by the sound of it, accusatory. ... It was the same language Shén Yù had spoken to me. The same incomprehensible language Teacher had lapsed into. English. - Excerpt from Speck 30.3 and possibly more. History Background Unknown presumably an indispensable part of the current regime. Post-Timeskip Involved with the war with the United States. Gold Morning Was a major part of the Chinese push for alternate worlds and settling into a new palace.They were joined by others. Shén Yù the strategist was a surprisingly young man, wearing a black robe that was as straight and narrow as he was. He was focused on a small tablet computer. Beside him was Jiǎ, the imperial family’s tinker, and surely the individual who had set up the kaleidoscope effect, throwing off would-be assassins and intruders. Tōng Líng Tǎ was there as well, a very thin Chinese woman with a black robe and heavily painted face. Just below the dais were three more Yàngbǎn members. Null, One and Two. The key components in their power structure, the ones who divided the powers, controlled the squads and gave them the strength to be effective, respectively. If I acted, I’d be targeted. We’d taken out one of their armies, an infiltration and raiding party with the Simurgh’s attack, but there were four groups remaining. One of the other raiding parties was less biased towards infiltration and more towards movement. They were the cavalry, the blitzers, the ones capable of flight and teleportation. In the wake of the raids, the first strikes our side had deployed against them had been viciously counterattacked. Quite possibly Shén Yù’s work. Any attempt to attack was met by equal and opposite counterattack, targeting the leaders of the offensive party. Even with nigh-omniscience, even with my portals, I wasn’t sure I wanted to gamble on this. Overconfidence at this juncture would be ruinous. - Excerpt from Speck 30.3 Tried to halt Khepri's ascendancy and badly failed.Speck 30.3 He was used to deal with Dragon,Shén Yù informed me of the general thrust of Dragon’s attack. I could see it through his perceptions, mottled, indistinct lines in the battlefield. X drones moving to one of my groups, Y drones to another. The path they intended to travel… I could tell that as well. An initial wave of attacks to debilitate, and then the second wave, drones for a follow-up strike. The lines had a feeling to them. I could almost assign labels. Infantry, cavalry. I looked around me. If I drew parallels, tried to correlate what I was seeing with what Shén Yù was seeing… She was aiming to strike me. How? Seventeen Dragon-craft deployed from the hangar. Again, not combat models, but utility models, fast response and rescue. Craft she’d been holding in reserve, no doubt because the cost of deploying them outweighed their potential benefit against Scion. The clearer Dragon’s direction of attack became, the more Shén Yù’s awareness clarified on her weak points. Distant locations and objectives. Some were objectives I couldn’t identify, even with the clairvoyant. He only saw within the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere. - Excerpt from Speck 30.4 and was largely successful.My ranged capes aimed for portals once again. This time, I put the exit portals against Earth’s atmosphere, aiming for the general direction of a satellite. It took thirty seconds of sustained fire before Shén Yù’s power stopped telling me it was a weak point. Other thinker powers in my range were giving me similar feedback. A cape with perfect eyesight was telling me it could even see the explosion. The displays across Dragon’s private realm shifted further. ... jettisoned outer shells and accelerated. Half the payload, but they had the same kind of propulsion jets I had in my flight pack. I moved the portals a fraction of a second before they speared through, and they continued onward through open air. Shén Yù informed me about the third wave’s imminent attack. Not a feeling of attack, but… the initial wave had read to his senses as something like infantry or spearmen. The second wave had read as cavalry. This? A siege weapon? The lines that Shén Yù’s power painted on the world indicated something deliberate, devastating, but diffuse, somehow indirect. I directed fire at the drones, and forcefields served to protect most. The non-Yàngbǎn capes I had that could penetrate the forcefields were few and far between, the drones too numerous. They set up, planting their mechanical limbs firmly on the ground, and then they deployed, pyramid-shaped structures, glowing blue at the peak. My portals began opening, ones I’d closed not long ago. Portals I’d opened to control my capes, and the larger portal I’d opened to escape to this location on the Byzantine Tower. I couldn’t shut them. Drones started to make their way through. I, in turn, opened another portal, handing one tinker device to Shén Yù before hurrying on, leading the rest through. Portals blocked the drone’s ranged fire. ... Saint, taking over her systems again? They flowed through the doorway to Shén Yù, blitzing him in passing. No. Neither of the two seemed to be paying attention to me. They were focused on Scion. I began erecting portals, shooting the drones out of the air, defending myself against the initial bombardment of tear gas canisters and containment foam. If I was slow to react, it was because of the disorientation, the lack of knowledge of who and what I was up against. - Excerpt from Speck 30.4 Trivia *As he is presumably part of the establishment as a important part of the Yàngbǎn he may be what counts as a hero. Given the situation in south america he has not been officially categorized as such. Category:Characters Category:Males Category:Yangban Category:Thinker Category:Worm Characters